The 7 Best Applicant Tracking Systems

Greenhouse has arguably the best ATS for the mid market, and is aggressively going after enterprise accounts. Their partner ecosystem, bolstered by best in category APIs, allow their customers to take advantage of third party applications with no upcharge. Nearly every HRTech vendor that integrates with the ATS starts with Greenhouse.

The Bad

Greenhouse is not cheap, and can seem expensive relative to more nascent, or outdated systems. But, this is a case of getting what you pay for.

The most interesting aspect to Workable’s solution is their sourcing capability which they have integrated with the rest of the ATS. Also, their flexible pricing allows smaller organizations to get started quickly.

The Bad

Most of the negative feedback on this product has to do with workflows and features that are there, but not to the liking of an individual or company. We see this a lot with ATS’s - you really have to find the one that fits your workflow style.

We’ve heard from quite a few practitioners that SmartRecruiters is great at taking feedback from their customers, and rapidly integrating that into the product. SmartRecruiters is a modern ATS that can be affordable even for companies with a smaller budget. It’s also a company thinking about more than ATS as they have a full talent attraction suite.

The Bad

As with many of the more modern ATS’s, SmartRecruiters lacks some of the functionality of the more established vendors. Also, it’s another case of finding the solution that fits your own personal workflow and style.

Lever was started with a product mindset, which put design first from its inception. It’s a modern ATS that also has a unique suite of tools such as Lever Nurture, which can make recruiters much more efficient when engaging candidates (similar to how sales automation tech has made Sales Development Reps 10x more efficient in recent years).

The Bad

While Lever Nurture seems like an interesting module, we’ve yet to find a company using it effectively. Also, Lever is mostly adopted by fast growing tech companies. That’s not to say other more traditional companies wouldn’t benefit from their solution - but it’s worth noting that the product may be adopted for tech companies specific needs.

ClearCompany has flown under the radar for a long time despite their 99% customer retention rate (no other ATS seems to come close), and also offers a robust HCM suite that is fully integrated with the goal of offering insights across the full employee lifecycle. That’s a cool vision!

The Bad

The majority of customers are smaller organizations in industries where the fight for talent isn’t as vicious as tech and professional services. They also lack in their employer branding offerings.

iCIMS was one of the original SaaS companies. They have a feature set that is great for SMB all the way up to the largest companies and are always in the conversation about best ATS. Despite age, they continue to innovate with the acquisition of TextRecruit in 2018 and a constantly evolving product roadmap.

The Bad

Most of the iCIMS complaints are about an outdated user interface and design. It’s also worth noting that they will charge for each integration you have with another HRTech vendor, typically $250/mo/integration.

Google is great at building software, and Google Hire has quickly gained thousands of customers with their ATS that even startups can afford given the per employee per month pricing model. We’ve heard a lot of great things about Google Hire even though the product is barely two years old.

The Bad

If you’re not using G Suite for the rest of your business, forget it. Also, because this solution is so new, they still lack a lot of features and functionality that you may be used to if you’re coming from a system that has been around for 5+ years (of course, most of those systems have other problems!).